Fiber based sensors have come of age commercially and are now increasing in volume deployment. The sensors are used to measure acceleration, pressure, electric current and more. To achieve the performance required from the sensor requires improvements over key performance aspects of a standard telecommunication fiber such as SMF28. Key design considerations are addressed, reduction of bend loss, joining two fibers, reliability, in particular the fiber lifetime, and mechanical stiffness together with features of birefringence or photosensitivity. Application areas such as Fiber Optic Gyroscope (FOG), acoustic and seismic sensors and sensing of electric current have specific demands of specialist optical fibers and these areas are used to illustrate the technical design considerations.

Date Published: 21 May 2012
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 8370, Fiber Optic Sensors and Applications IX, 83700O (21 May 2012); doi: 10.1117/12.928506

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8370:
Fiber Optic Sensors and Applications IX
Henry H. Du; Gary Pickrell; Eric Udd, Editor(s)